Dwelling Destroyed, Pet Killed in Pylesville Mobile Home Fire

A Pylesville family was displaced after an electrical failure on Sunday afternoon sparked a fire that killed their pet and destroyed their mobile home.

Just before 3:30 pm on Sunday, emergency personnel were dispatched to the 4700 block of Fawn Grove Road in Pylesville for the report of a dwelling fire in a single-wide mobile home.

A neighbor discovered the fire, which originated in a rear bedroom and was blamed on electrical failure.

Thirty firefighters from the Norrisville Volunteer Fire Company responded and had the single-alarm blaze under control within 20 minutes.

The State Fire Marshal’s Office estimated the fire caused $25,000 in damage to the structure and another $75,000 in damage to its contents. There were no reported injuries, but one dog perished in the fire.

The occupants were not home at the time of the fire and have been displaced along with their four children. Harford County Disaster Assistance, friends, and family are assisting them.

If we’re not going to get full time paid fire protection the county government needs pass legislation to step in and have more oversight over all the fire companies.

Just this past weekend Abingdon Fire Company was having some sort of community event where the general public goes to the station.

I rode by once and people are parking everywhere on the shoulder of a 40mph road near their station, walking out in traffic No signs warning drivers ANYWHERE in either directions up the road. No cones.

Completely utterly ridiculous these people can botch traffic control and create such a hazard.

I did come back an hour later and they had 1 person who appeared to be struggling with traffic control because the amount of people coming and going.

LOL, Why don’t you volunteer your services? You are probably not aware of the amount of hours “these people”, spend training, pulling duty and addressing other departmental responsibilities. It is all done in an effort to help serve and protect our neighbors and our community. The number of volunteers and money are always a concern. That is the reason fire companies host events like this is to raise funds and to also promote awareness of the department and our mission. If you don’t want to or can’t volunteer, a monetary donation would always be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I didn’t look for anything, I saw no warning of traffic hazards and made a comment about it. End of story. That’s your opinion that traffic wasn’t “that bad.” I never made a comment on the congestion, which was abnormally high for the average Saturday late morning early afternoon.

You seemed needed to reply to me about the dedication of volunteers. Im with you, that’s great, but it still doesn’t answer my question.

Agree, I always try to support Abingdon Fire. They do a great job, hardworking and well trained. I may not be able to do their type of work but always contribute. My dad taught me this as a kid in Middle River. I know he gave to them over 40 or 50 years.

The problem I see with current day Harford Fire/Rescue is that very few people want to volunteer even with increasing population, and it’s normal to get half staffed (or less) fire department apparatus from multiple stations away to be the first arriving crew. The other issue is that training and staffing requirements have pushed a lot of people away from the volunteer service.

While perfection is impossible … the crack of discrepancies seems to be getting larger and the only response to the question is “Why don’t you volunteer?”

The time to start a big sit down with everyone involved in Fire Service in this county to realistically come to mutual agreement that “career” fire service is inevitable and unfortunately going to be placed near some others volunteer’s station.

I’ve been thinking what this county needs to do is get all the volunteer fire departments together and just rename everyone to “Harford County Volunteer Fire Department” and paint all the equipment red. That way most of the general public won’t know which station the piece of equipment came from.